nine months

Suddenly, for the first time in the whole long and ridiculous ordeal, I was afraid.

I felt sickened and terrible but still not frightened.

At that moment I was calm, very calm.

“I am still the commander in chief of the armed forces of Liberia and head of state.” He called on the people of Liberia to resist Quiwonkpa and his forces.Word raced through the streets that Doe’s people were now on the rampage, ready to wreak revenge on anyone. I turned to Robert and said, “If anybody sees us on this road now, we will surely be killed.”

ellen johnson sirleafneglect to consider the downside. They do not, for example, consider the possibility of ostracism. But the truth is that if you want to lead and be hailed, you must also be prepared to be ostracized, because surely it will happen at some point in your career. I’ve gone through too many periods of ostracism to keep track of them all. Whenever I got into trouble with one government or another, I knew that many people in my life, even some friends, would abandon me. They were afraid—afraid to be associated with me, afraid they would get into trouble themselves. This is the way of the world, of human nature, and if you want to lead, you have to accept that there will be conscious at-tempts to push you into oblivion. You have to be prepared to be very lonely sometimes.

eep in my bones I knew the situation would re-solve, that things would be all right in the end. My faith bolstered me, as did the outpouring of support; no prison walls could hold that back

from the Bible would come to me: “Be still and know that I am God.”

This involved removing your shirt, then crawling, chest down, across the long expanse of sand and rocks that led to the prison area. It was really bad. People would get up at the end with their chests bleeding and raw

stripping, f logging, raping, and eventually firing upon students.

If sustainable growth were to be achieved in Liberia, it was primarily Liberians and Liberian businesses that must achieve it